Discussion

Passover Coke at Lucky in SF

I just picked up 8 2-liter bottles of kosher for Passover Coke at the Lucky on Sloat (near Sunset) in San Francisco. This Coke is sweetened by sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup because corn is not kosher for Passover for many (but not all) Jewish people. Anyway, whether or not you're an Ashkenazi Jew, you may want to pick some of this up -- sugar sweetened Coke tastes much better than the hfcs-sweetened Coke. It was $1.79 per 2-liter bottle.

I have bought cases of Mexican Coke at Costco, too, but there are folks who don't want to spend $17.99 for a case or who don't have room in their apartments for a case, and there are also folks who are looking for Kosher for Passover Coke -- I just thought that I'd give them a pointer to the stuff. By the way, the KFP Coke has a yellow cap that says Kosher for Passover. They also have KFP Diet Coke.

People should note as has been mentioned on the board in other posts ... Mexican Coca Cola is no longer reliable in terms of using sugar ... some versions are now using HFCS ... check the labels ... even at Costco.

The Lucky at Fulton (in San Francisco) had a large end cap display of them last night - across from the do-it-yourself cash registers.

I told a friend abt this because it was just interesting. Turns out she has one last can of the old Coke that she's been hoarding. She ran out and bought a few 2-liter bottles at Luckys. Thanks Nancy Berry for posting the info.

It's true that just because Coke is from Mexico doesn't mean it's sweetened with cane sugar (as opposed to HFCS). Some U.S. producers of HFCS have been trucking HFCS across the Mexican border into Mexico at a loss in order to increase market penetration in that country (what some people have dubbed a "sugar war" with Mexico). One of the reasons for the increased price of "real Mexican Coke" here in San Francisco Bay Area is that vendors would have to go deeper and deeper into Mexico to source their product, staying a few steps ahead of the HFCS producers. The longer trucking distance of those heavy glass bottles add up very quickly even without today's gas prices.

Mexican Coke bottles are not required by the Mexican government to have a list of ingredients on them. Those labels are put on the bottles at the border for U.S. consumers and are produced by the syrup manufacturers, as they are the only ones who "know" what goes into the syrup. The bottler (which may be owned by the syrup manufacturer) has the right to choose (within certain limits) what sweetener and the quantities of sweetener, carbonation and water to bottle (again within certain limits). So U.S. labels are typically written along the lines of "sucrose and/or high fructose corn syrup."

I've been told that the official Coke party line is that the syrup is the same in the U.S. and in Mexico. Typically, the range of sweetener allowed (by the beverage companies' quality control departments) for the Mexican market is higher than for the U.S. market, to account for local tastes. The same official party line is that both cane sugar and HFCS are "taste neutral" and so "officially" there should be no taste difference (other than sweeteness) between the two, but I for one notice a big difference. Give me a real Mexican Coke in a glass bottle any day.

For those doing a taste test, for the best apples-to-apples comparison, taste sodas from the same type of container (i.e., glass-vs.-glass, etc.) as the type of container can influence factors such as how much carbonation a bottler decides to use.

About KFP Coke, the certifying bodies/rabbis have different benchmarks as to whether existing HFCS bottling lines can be flushed out (and how many times is needed) to be considered for KFP Coke. Our Customers taught us much about that topic.